Magical run for Irish ends in rout

Notre Dame lost 42-14 on Monday.









MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — On a flawless South Florida night, Notre Dame players saw a legend emerge in present time. To their bone-deep disbelief, it was not them.


The eruption of streamers and confetti and joy surrounded them, and their shock and desolation filled the spaces in between. A program lost for a quarter-century might not be directionless, but the top looked far away from here.


A moment the Irish believed they were meant to have ended in a quiet walk out of sight and into another year of what might be. Alabama is the national champion, again, the SEC's marauding run extended to a seventh straight year with a 42-14 humiliation of Notre Dame in the BCS title game Monday, the Irish's first loss also their most excruciating.








Most left the field with distant gazes as the Crimson Tide hoisted newspapers with headlines blaring, "BAMA AGAIN." Nose guard Louis Nix limped off slowly. Tailback Theo Riddick pulled a towel over his head to hide his tears, which then burst forth by his locker stall. Across the room, freshman cornerback KeiVarae Russell tried to laugh through crying he couldn't stop.


Twenty-four years since that last title in 1988, wandering through losses and death and empty promise. When everyone saw the light at the end of it all, what they saw was that crystal football hoisted skyward. It remained far, far beyond their grasp at Sun Life Stadium and claimed by a different reborn college football dynasty.


"They're back-to-back national champs," Irish coach Brian Kelly said. "So that's what it looks like. Measure yourself against that, and it was pretty clear across the board what we have to do."


It was an oppressive deluge of unprepared and nerve-racked play from the start, the most yards (529) surrendered by Notre Dame (12-1) all year and the most points ever surrendered by Notre Dame in a bowl game. Eddie Lacy rampaged for 140 yards, AJ McCarron threw for 264 and four touchdowns and Alabama (13-1) did, basically, whatever it wanted.


Alabama players called a meeting shortly after their arrival in Florida, and some mused that it reflected a fracture in the focus of the defending champs. But the stoicism they demonstrated all week turned out to be determination to kick the ever-loving tar out of the nation's No. 1 team.


"We knew one team would break," Alabama defensive end Damion Square said, "and it wasn't going to be us."


It required only five plays for Alabama to find the end zone. Lacy was the sledgehammer, and it was 7-0 after the longest touchdown drive and the first first-quarter touchdown allowed by Notre Dame all season.


The curb-stomping didn't end. McCarron threw a touchdown pass, then set up a T.J. Yeldon score with 25- and 28-yard passes, then dumped a short toss to Lacy that the junior hauled into the end zone. It was a 28-0 lead, arrived at brutally, with special indifference to destiny and fortune.


"They did not dominate us," Nix said. "We just didn't play our ballgame, man. We didn't make tackles. Everything we did or had lined up should have worked."


In whatever context or interpretation, Alabama was destroying everything Notre Dame built over a brilliant season, stomping validation into a million little pieces.


"It felt like we were sinking in quicksand," guard Chris Watt said. "We couldn't get out of it."


It was 35-0 before Notre Dame at last responded with an 85-yard drive to an Everett Golson 2-yard option keeper, ending the Tide's 108-minute shutout streak in BCS championship appearances. When McCarron answered with another scoring toss to Amari Cooper, all that was left was getting out alive and figuring where to go from here.


After that last title in 1988, the pall descended. Lou Holtz left, and then it was Bob Davie and George O'Leary's resume and Tyrone Willingham and Charlie Weis' decided schematic advantage. Then Kelly arrived, and there was no definable reason to expect a title run to happen this year, and then it did.


It seemed, regardless of the outcome, Notre Dame might be a fully functional college football leviathan humming along. Then came the mighty Tide and a dent in the validation.


So, yes, the Irish making it this far proved a great deal.


"Nobody had us in this position to start the season," said receiver DaVaris Daniels, a bright spot with 115 receiving yards, "and look how far we've come, so quick."


And yet the Irish absorbing such a bracing setback means they must prove so much more.


"At Notre Dame, you're expected to win national championships," Watt said. "A lot of the things we did this season were just unbelievable. Those were all wonderful things. But it doesn't really mean anything when you don't win a national championship. You can't really win anything else here."


So off they went, dazed and empty-handed. All around them the new college football dynasty celebrated. All around them, Notre Dame saw what it desperately wanted to become.


Off they went, into the tunnels, a brilliant season ending well short of legend. And the Irish would do what everyone before them had done for a quarter-century, and wake up in the morning just waiting to get back.


bchamilton@tribune.com


Twitter @ChiTribHamilton





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Galaxy phones power Samsung to record $8.3 billion profit






SEOUL (Reuters) – Samsung Electronics, the world leader in mobiles and memory chips, said it likely earned a quarterly profit of $ 8.3 billion, as it sold close to 500 handsets a minute and as demand picked up for the flat screens it makes for mobile devices, including those for rival Apple Inc products.


That run of five straight record quarters may end in January-March on weaker seasonal demand, though a strong pipeline of smartphones – the South Korean group’s biggest earner – and improving chip prices have eased concerns that earnings growth could slow this year, powering Samsung shares to record levels last week.






The stock closed down 1.3 percent on Tuesday, in a Seoul market that fell 0.7 percent.


“Investors are a bit concerned that Samsung’s momentum may slow in the first half. The smartphone market is unlikely to sustain its strong growth as advanced markets are nearing saturation despite growth in emerging countries,” said Kim Sung-soo, a fund manager at LS Asset Management.


Samsung has outpaced Apple – its biggest rival and biggest customer – despite the U.S. firm’s launch of the latest iPhone 5, with sales momentum boosted by its Galaxy Note II phone-cum-tablet, or ‘phablet’, in the fourth quarter. IPhone 5 sales were a little below expectations, analysts said.


While Apple rolled out just a single new smartphone last year globally, Samsung bombarded the market with 37 variants tweaked for regional and consumer tastes, from high-end smartphones to cheaper low-end models. By comparison, Taiwan’s HTC Corp released 18 models, Nokia 9 and LG Electronics 24.


HTC on Monday said its fourth-quarter profit slumped more than 90 percent as its sales continue to trail those of the Galaxy range and the iPhone.


Samsung, valued at close to $ 230 billion, gave its October-December earnings guidance on Tuesday, ahead of the full earnings release expected by January 25.


A HIGH NOTE


Shipments of Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S III, which overtook the iPhone 4S in the third quarter to become the world’s best-selling smartphone, are likely to have slipped to around 15 million in the last quarter from 18 million in July-September, analysts estimate, but sales of around 8 million Galaxy Note II ‘phablets’ should more than make up for that – pushing overall smartphone shipments to around 63 million.


“The Note was selling well, boosting fourth-quarter profit, while iPhone 5 sales were less than expected,” said Song Myung-sub, an analyst at HI Investment & Securities.


“Samsung’s profit will drop in the current quarter because of decreased phone profits. It will launch the Galaxy S IV only in March or April so, without new models, phone sales prices will fall this quarter. For the whole year, Samsung will launch new models faster than Apple and have the upper hand in the smartphone market.”


The new Galaxy, widely expected to be released within months, may have an unbreakable screen and full high-definition quality resolution boasting 440 pixels per inch, as well as a better camera and a more powerful processor.


“Samsung’s smartphone shipments are likely to grow even in a seasonally weak first quarter. The early launch of the Galaxy S IV would drive second-quarter growth momentum,” said BNP Paribas Securities analyst Peter Yu, who predicts Samsung’s 2013 operating profit will grow 25 percent to almost $ 35 billion.


Samsung is expected to increase its smartphone sales by more than a third this year, and widen its lead over Apple as it offers a broader range of mobile devices, said Neil Mawston, executive director at market researcher Strategy Analytics, which forecasts Samsung will sell 290 million smartphones this year, up from a projected 215 million in 2012.


Kim Sung-in, an analyst at Kiwoom Securities, sees Samsung shipping 320 million smartphones this year and doubling sales of its tablets to 32 million.


STRONG NUMBERS


Samsung said its October-December operating profit jumped 89 percent to 8.8 trillion won from a year ago, just ahead of a forecast for 8.7 trillion won by 16 analysts surveyed by Reuters. That is 8.6 percent higher than its previous record of 8.1 trillion won in July-September.


Analysts expect profits from the mobile division to more than double from last year and increase slightly from the previous quarter, to around 5.8 trillion won. A recovery in chip prices and flat screens should also boost component earnings, helped by booming sales of mobiles carrying Samsung’s chips, micro-processors and flat screens.


Reflecting the strong outlook, shares in Asia’s most valuable technology stock last week hit a life high of 1.584 million won ($ 1,500). The stock gained 44 percent last year, topping Apple’s 31 percent increase and easily outpacing a 9 percent rise on the broader Korean market.


Samsung, led by founding family member and chairman Lee Kun-hee, is embroiled in a patent legal battle with Apple globally. Apple won a $ 1.05 billion verdict against Samsung in August, but has failed to win a permanent sales ban on several, mostly older Samsung models.


(Additional reporting by Joyce Lee and Narae Kim; Editing by Ian Geoghegan)


Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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David Bowie breaks long silence with new music release






LONDON (Reuters) – British singer David Bowie released his first new song in nearly a decade on Tuesday in a surprise launch coinciding with his 66th birthday.


“Where Are We Now?”, produced by his long-term collaborator Tony Visconti, is a mournful look back to the time he spent in Berlin in the 1970s with an accompanying video featuring black-and-white footage of the city when it was still divided.






The song, available on iTunes and free to view on his re-launched website, was recorded in New York and will be followed by his first studio album since 2003, “The Next Day”, due to hit shelves in March.


Bowie’s label Columbia Records said the new song was a “treasure” that appeared “as if out of nowhere”, underlining the element of surprise from a release that ends years of speculation among fans over whether he would record again.


“Throwing shadows and avoiding the industry treadmill is very David Bowie despite his extraordinary track record that includes album sales in excess of 130 million not to mention his massive contributions in the area of art, fashion, style, sexual exploration and social commentary,” the label said.


The album will consist of 14 songs, and a deluxe edition will feature three bonus tracks.


The glam-rock star shot to fame with “Space Oddity” in 1969, and later with his alter ego Ziggy Stardust, before establishing himself as a chart-topping force in the early 1980s.


Known for his constant desire to re-invent and experiment with different musical genres, Bowie is considered one of the most influential, and unusual stars of the pop era.


(Reporting by Mike Collett-White)


Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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The New Old Age Blog: Who Should Receive Organ Transplants?

Joe Gammalo had been contending with pulmonary fibrosis, a scarring of the lungs, for more than a decade when he came to the Cleveland Clinic in 2008 seeking a lung transplant.

“It had gotten to the point where I was on oxygen all the time and in a wheelchair,” he told me in an interview. “I didn’t expect to live.”

Lung transplants are a dicey proposition, involving a huge surgical procedure, arduous follow-up, the lifelong use of potent immunosuppressive drugs and high rates of serious side effects. “It’s not like taking out an appendix,” said Dr. Marie Budev, the medical director of the clinic’s lung transplant program.

Only 50 to 57 percent of all recipients live for five years, she noted, and they will still die of their disease. But there’s no other treatment for pulmonary fibrosis.

Some medical centers would have turned Mr. Gammalo away. Because survival rates are even lower for older patients, guidelines from the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation caution against lung transplants for those over 65, though they set no age limit.

But “we are known as an aggressive, high-risk center,” said Dr. Budev. So Mr. Gammalo was 66 when he received a lung; his newly found buddy, Clyde Conn, who received the other lung from the same donor, was 69.

You can’t mistake the trend: A graying population and revised policies determining who gets priority for donated organs, have led to a rising proportion of older adults receiving transplants.

My colleague Judith Graham has reported on the increase in heart transplants, but the pattern extends to other organs, too.

The number of kidney transplants performed annually on adults over 65 tripled between 1998 and last year, according to data from the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients. In 2001, 7.4 percent of liver transplant recipients were over 65; last year, that rose to 13 percent.

The rise in elderly lung transplant candidates is particularly dramatic because, since 2005, a “lung allocation score” puts those at the highest mortality risk, rather than those who’ve waited longest, at the top of the list.

In 2001, about 3 percent of those on the wait list and of those transplanted were over 65; last year, older patients represented almost 18 percent of wait-listed candidates and more than a quarter of transplant recipients. (Medicare pays for the surgery, though patients face co-pays and considerable out-of-pocket costs, including for drugs and travel.)

The debate has grown, too: When the number of adults awaiting transplants keeps growing, but organ donations stay flat, is it desirable or even ethical that an increasing proportion of recipients are elderly?

Dr. Budev, who estimated that a third of her program’s patients are over 65, votes yes. As long as a program selects candidates carefully, “how can you deny them a therapy?” she asked. So the Cleveland Clinic has no age limit. “We feel that everyone should have a chance.”

At the University of Michigan, by contrast, the age limit remains 65, though Dr. Kevin Chan, the transplant program’s medical director, acknowledged that some fit older patients get transplanted.

“You can talk about this all day — it’s a tough one,” Dr. Chan said. Younger recipients have greater physiologic reserve to aid in the arduous recovery; older ones face higher risk of subsequent kidney failure, stroke, diabetes and other diseases, and, of course, their lifespans are shorter to begin with.

Donated lungs, fragile and prone to injury, are a particularly scarce commodity. Last year, surgeons performed 16,055 kidney transplants, 5,805 liver transplants and 1,949 heart transplants. Only1,830 patients received lung transplants.

“What if there’s a 35-year-old on a ventilator who needs the lung just as much?” Dr. Chan said. “Why should a 72-year-old possibly take away a lung from a 35-year-old?” Yet, he acknowledged, “it’s easy to look at the statistics and say, ‘Give the lungs to younger patients.’ At the bedside, when you meet this patient and family, it’s a lot different.”

These questions about who deserves scarce resources — those most likely to die without them? or those most likely to live longer with them? — will persist as the population ages. They’re also likely to arise when the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation begins working towards revised guidelines this spring. (I’d also like to hear your take, below.)

Lots of 65- and 75-year-olds are very healthy. Yet transplants themselves can cause harm and there’s no backup, like dialysis. Without the transplant, they die. But when the transplant goes wrong, they also die.

More than four years post-transplant, the Cleveland Clinic’s “lung brothers” are success stories. Mr. Conn, who lives near Dayton, Ohio, can’t walk very far or lift more than 10 pounds, but he works part time as a real-estate appraiser and enjoys cruises with his wife.

Mr. Gammalo, a onetime musician, has developed diabetes, like nearly half of all lung recipients. But he went onstage a few weeks back to sing “Don’t Be Cruel” with his son’s rock band, “a highlight of both our lives,” he said.

Yet when I asked Mr. Conn, now 73, how he felt about having priority over a younger but healthier person, he paused. “It’s a good question,” he said, to which he had no answer.


Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions.”

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Sears CEO D'Ambrosio to step down









Sears Holdings Corp. said Monday night that Chief Executive Officer Louis D'Ambrosio will step down Feb. 2, due to family health matters, and Chairman Edward Lampert will add the role of CEO.


The surprise move fuels uncertainty at the Hoffman Estates-based company, which has struggled for years to re-establish itself as a department store in an ultracompetitive retailing industry dominated by low-price giant Wal-Mart and big box and specialty stores.


The decision by Lampert, a hedge fund operator who is the company's biggest shareholder, to take over day-to-day control represents a reversal from his naming of D'Ambrosio as chief executive nearly two years ago after operating with an interim CEO.





"In light of Lou's decision to step down, the board feels it is important that there is continuity of leadership during this important period of transformation and improvement at Sears Holdings," Lampert said in a statement. "I have agreed to assume these additional responsibilities in order to continue the company's recovery and sustain the momentum we are experiencing, as well as further the development of the management team under the distributed leadership model, which provides our business unit leaders with greater control, authority and autonomy."


Sears Holdings, which operates Sears and Kmart, also updated its fourth-quarter earnings outlook Monday night. The company said it expects to report a net loss $280 million to $360 million, or $2.64 to $3.40 per diluted share, for the quarter ending Feb. 2. The loss includes a charge of about $450 million because of pension settlements and an additional $42 million in pension expenses.


Excluding pension expenses, Sears said it expects to earn $132 million to $212 million, or $1.25 to $2 per share.


Analysts polled by Bloomberg had been expecting adjusted net income of about $137 million.


For the fiscal year, Sears said it expects to lose $721 million to $801 million, or $6.80 to $7.56 per diluted share, which includes pension-related costs and other adjustments reported late last year. Excluding those items, the company said it expects to lose $123 million to $203 million, or $1.16 to $1.92 per share.


D'Ambrosio became CEO after working for the company as a consultant. The 16-year veteran of IBM Corp. had been CEO of a telecommunications company before joining Sears.


"I have worked very closely with Eddie over the past two years. I can say this: there is simply no one in the world that cares more about Sears Holdings and has thought more deeply about our company than Eddie," D'Ambrosio wrote to employees.


Lampert gained control of Sears in 2005 after engineering the merger between Kmart and Sears Roebuck & Co. For years, speculation about Lampert's intentions for the company focused on the value of its real estate, but under D'Ambrosio, Sears appeared to pay more attention to retail aspirations.


The company reported improved performance — it beat Wall Street expectations — in the previous quarter, but Sears stock has lost more than 35 percent of its value since November, closing Monday at $42.92, up 1.7 percent.


 Crshropshire@tribune.com

Twitter: @corilyns 





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Police: Good Samaritans foil North Side robbery













Jose Rodriguez, 30.


Jose Rodriguez, 30.
(Chicago Police Department / January 6, 2013)


























































A screwdriver-wielding parolee was tackled by two good Samaritans after he stole a woman's purse in the Lincoln Park neighborhood Saturday night, police said.


About 11:45 p.m., Jose Rodriguez, 30, approached a woman from behind in the 800 block of West Diversey Parkway, the Chicago Police Department said in a news release. 


Rodriguez held an arm around the 29-year-old woman's neck, placed a screwdriver against her torso, and demanded money, police said.





Rodgriguez ran off with the woman's purse shortly after, police said.


A 20-year-old witness took off in pursuit, and when Rodriguez approached a 24-year-old man walking in the opposite direction, the 20-year-old yelled for him to stop the robber, police said.


Together, the men tackled Rodriguez and restrained him until police showed up, police said.


Rodriguez was arrested and charged with armed robbery with a dangerous weapon and a parole violation.


asege@tribune.com


Twitter: @AdamSege






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‘Facebook Dead’: How to ‘Kill’ Your Friends






Rusty Foster discovered he was dead last week, at least according to Facebook. He had been locked out of his account, which had been turned into a “memorial page,” because someone had reported the Maine man as deceased to the social media site.


He tweeted Thursday, “Facebook thinks I’m dead. I’m tempted to just let it,” then “Did you know that you can report any of your Facebook friends dead & Facebook will lock them out of their account with no evidence needed?”






As one of Foster’s friends discovered, it doesn’t take much to convince Facebook that somebody is dead. By simply going to the ” Memorialization Request” page and filling out a form, including a link to an obituary, anybody can take someone else off Facebook.


The obituary needs to have the same name (or at least a close name), but doesn’t need to match any other details on the profile. The obituary Foster’s friend used to prove Foster’s death was for a man who was born in 1924 and died in 2011 in a different state than the one Foster lists on Facebook as his home state.


Foster, 36, said he never got any notification his account was going to be locked, and only discovered it when he attempted to log in. He filled out a form to report the error, and received a response that began with “We are very sorry to hear about your loss.”


More than a full day later, Foster’s account still hadn’t been unlocked. Buzzfeed, tipped off by Foster, posted an article in which one editor “killed” another editor, John Herrman, on Facebook. According to the article, about an hour after Herrman reported the error to Facebook, his profile was reactivated. About an hour after that, 27 hours after Foster first reported his erroneous death, he was “resurrected” by Facebook and allowed back into his account.


Foster does not know the total amount of time he was “Facebook dead.” He told ABC that nothing was different with his account when he logged back in, only that some of his friends had a little fun with his status.


“The only thing that happened was some of my friends posted little mock-eulogies for me, because word got around that I was locked out, due to a temporary case of death,” Foster wrote in an email with the subject line, “Rusty, the Facebook zombie.”


When pages are memorialized, they are removed from sidebars, timelines and friend suggestions and searches. This is likely to prevent people from seeing their friends who have died pop up on their newsfeed, and to prevent people from hacking into the accounts of dead people.


Foster said he understands the position Facebook is in when it comes to the death of one of its users, but believes there are better options for the social media site.


“There ought to be an email sent to the account’s email address informing it that the account has been reported dead and providing a link or something to dispute the report before any action is taken,” Foster wrote.


Foster said the most frustrating part was not being able to get into his account to “click the ‘I’m not dead’ button that should also be there.”


This has apparently been the same “memorialization” process since at least 2009, when another user took to his personal blog to write about his experience of being “Facebook dead.” In his case, the obituary his friend used to have him declared dead wasn’t even close to his real name. Instead, the man who performed the funeral services had a similar name.


In a statement to ABC News, Facebook said the system is in place in order to respect the privacy of the deceased.


“We have designed the memorialization process to be effective for grieving families and friends, while still providing precautions to protect against either erroneous or malicious efforts to memorialize the account of someone who is not deceased,” the statement reads. “We also provide an appeals process for the rare instances in which accounts are mistakenly reported or inadvertently memorialized.”


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”Life of Pi” edges ”Hobbit” at overseas box office






LOS ANGELES, (TheWrap.com) – Fox’s “Life of Pi” was king at the overseas box office this weekend, taking in $ 60.1 million from 65 foreign markets to raises its international gross to nearly $ 302 million.


The big weekend narrowly beat out “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” which added another $ 57 million overseas, and raised its worldwide box office haul to nearly $ 825 million since opening on December 12.






Director Ang Lee‘s “Pi” opened No. 1 in seven of eight markets in which it debuted. Russia, at $ 14.1 million, was the weekend leader, followed by Australia ($ 8.2 million) and South Korea ($ 5.4 million). China, where “Pi has completed its run, is its top market with more than $ 90 million.


With the big weekend, Warner Bros.‘ and MGM’s “The Hobbit” has passed “Twilight” Breaking Dawn 2″ at the global box office. The “Twilight” finale has brought in $ 813 million since opening on November 16.


The overseas total came from 65 markets, and was run up with roughly 5.6 million admissions from almost 13,500 screens. That’s a 43 percent drop from the previous week.


Overall, “The Hobbit” has taken in more than $ 560 million overseas. Germany remains the strongest foreign territory, having brought in $ 74 million. The U.K. ($ 72 million), France ($ 39.6 million), Russia ($ 36 million) and Spain ($ 32 million) are next. Its North American total, after adding $ 17.5 million this weekend, is $ 263 million.


Paramount’s “Jack Reacher” was third for the weekend with $ 22.3 million from 16 territories and Universal’s “Les Miserables” was No. 4 with $ 14.5 million from 18 markets.


Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Alarm in Albuquerque Over Plan to End Methadone for Inmates


Mark Holm for The New York Times


Officials at New Mexico’s largest jail want to end its methadone program. Addicts like Penny Strayer hope otherwise.







ALBUQUERQUE — It has been almost four decades since Betty Jo Lopez started using heroin.




Her face gray and wizened well beyond her 59 years, Ms. Lopez would almost certainly still be addicted, if not for the fact that she is locked away in jail, not to mention the cup of pinkish liquid she downs every morning.


“It’s the only thing that allows me to live a normal life,” Ms. Lopez said of the concoction, which contains methadone, a drug used to treat opiate dependence. “These nurses that give it to me, they’re like my guardian angels.”


For the last six years, the Metropolitan Detention Center, New Mexico’s largest jail, has been administering methadone to inmates with drug addictions, one of a small number of jails and prisons around the country that do so.


At this vast complex, sprawled out among the mesas west of downtown Albuquerque, any inmate who was enrolled at a methadone clinic just before being arrested can get the drug behind bars. Pregnant inmates addicted to heroin are also eligible.


Here in New Mexico, which has long been plagued by one of the nation’s worst heroin scourges, there is no shortage of participants — hundreds each year — who have gone through the program.


In November, however, the jail’s warden, Ramon Rustin, said he wanted to stop treating inmates with methadone. Mr. Rustin said the program, which had been costing Bernalillo County about $10,000 a month, was too expensive.


Moreover, Mr. Rustin, a former warden of the Allegheny County Jail in Pennsylvania and a 32-year veteran of corrections work, said he did not believe that the program truly worked.


Of the hundred or so inmates receiving daily methadone doses, he said, there was little evidence of a reduction in recidivism, one of the program’s main selling points.


“My concern is that the courts and other authorities think that jail has become a treatment program, that it has become the community provider,” he said. “But jail is not the answer. Methadone programs belong in the community, not here.”


Mr. Rustin’s public stance has angered many in Albuquerque, where drug addiction has been passed down through generations in impoverished pockets of the city, as it has elsewhere across New Mexico.


Recovery advocates and community members argue that cutting people off from methadone is too dangerous, akin to taking insulin from a diabetic.


The New Mexico office of the Drug Policy Alliance, which promotes an overhaul to drug policy, has implored Mr. Rustin to reconsider his stance, saying in a letter that he did not have the medical expertise to make such a decision.


Last month, the Bernalillo County Commission ordered Mr. Rustin to extend the program, which also relies on about $200,000 in state financing annually, for two months until its results could be studied further.


“Addiction needs to be treated like any other health issue,” said Maggie Hart Stebbins, a county commissioner who supports the program.


“If we can treat addiction at the jail to the point where they stay clean and don’t reoffend, that saves us the cost of reincarcerating that person,” she said.


Hard data, though, is difficult to come by — hence the county’s coming review.


Darren Webb, the director of Recovery Services of New Mexico, a private contractor that runs the methadone program, said inmates were tracked after their release to ensure that they remained enrolled at outside methadone clinics.


While the outcome was never certain, Mr. Webb said, he maintained that providing methadone to inmates would give them a better chance of staying out of jail once they were released. “When they get out, they won’t be committing the same crimes they would if they were using,” he said. “They are functioning adults.”


In a study published in 2009 in The Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, researchers found that male inmates in Baltimore who were treated with methadone were far more likely to continue their treatment in the community than inmates who received only counseling.


Those who received methadone behind bars were also more likely to be free of opioids and cocaine than those who received only counseling or started methadone treatment after their release.


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Blackhawks fans, shops cheer end to NHL lockout









As soon as he heard the Chicago Blackhawks may soon be lacing up to play, Jim Boffa took his family out for a celebratory lunch near the United Center to toast the end of a 113-day NHL lockout.

"I didn't think it was going to happen," the 52-year-old Northbrook man said as he stood beside his wife and three children inside the Palace Grill restaurant on Madison Street.

On Sunday, business owners expressed relief while Blackhawks fans rejoiced after hearing that the NHL and players association reached a tentative deal on a new collective bargaining agreement.

The lockout has knocked the wind out of many establishments in the vicinity of the United Center. Palace Grill lost at least $75,000 over the past few months, owner George Lemperis said. Despite the damage, businesses are grateful that a partial hockey season will be salvaged.

"Any time there's an extra 20,000 people down the street, that's good for everyone," said Matt Doherty, general manager at WestEnd Bar.

At Clark Street Sports, a store that sells Blackhawks and Bulls memorabilia, the lockout's end means more sales and more work for employees, cashier Jose Salazar said.

On nongame days, one or two people might work at the small shop, but as many as five employees are around when professional sports teams play at the arena, he said.

"I'm not a big hockey fan, (but) I'm just excited to get a lot more hours," Salazar said.

Inside Johnny's IceHouse, a hockey rink west of the United Center, some children and adults sported Blackhawks hats, jerseys and T-shirts as they watched 10- and 11-year-old boys play hockey.

Many parents expressed enthusiasm about the end of the work stoppage, but some also said they felt their children lost out over the past few months.

"All these kids look up to the NHL players so much," said Brent Bainter, 39, as he watched his 10-year-old son's hockey team on the ice. "When you don't get a chance to see them play for half a year, it's kind of a bummer."

After the match ended, Alex Lazzerini, 11, who has played hockey since he was 2, said he was nervous the Blackhawks might not play this season.

"Now, I'm hoping to watch them win the Stanley Cup again," he said with a smile.

jmdelgado@tribune.com



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